Our Vision

2024 Vision and Strategy

 

In 2024, the vision of the BUV remains the same  – we have a vision to be a union of flourishing churches with christlike followers that redeems society.

In order to accomplish this, our local churches need to be equipped and new formats of church will need to be imagined. Therefore, the mission of the BUV Support Hub is to encourage, equip and empower our local churches and communities of faith to advance God’s kingdom.

To achieve this mission, the BUV Support Hub identified four strategic areas to focus on with which have remained unchanged over recent years.

  • Mission – to support churches to participate in a shared vision for mission
  • Leadership – to develop the capacity of people to lead flourishing churches
  • Relationship – to encourage churches to support, pray for, collaborate and pool resources for shared mission
  • Health – to provide effective processes to support our churches to flourish

Each one of these strategic focus areas has its own goals to be achieved, which you can see by clicking on the download link below. 

Download 2024 Strategic Plan (PDF)

On top of the strategic areas we set our goals for each year, we also recognize that because of the diversity of our union, we need to look at things from a few different angles – like putting different coloured lenses over the top of our glasses . Three of these lenses have been the same for the last few years but we have added an additional lens this year.

  • The cultural lens – 1/3 of our churches operate in a language other than English and just as Australia is a multi-cultural nation the vast majority of our churches are made up of multiple ethnicities so it is natural that when we seek to develop our strategy that we look at them through a cultural lens
  • The innovation lens – we are always keen to innovate – When we talk about innovation in our Union we are primarily talking about making changes that add value. An example of innovation can be found in partnerships with existing churches and placemakers to establish new missional communities where developers won’t allow physical churches. Other innovations have been some of our Rural churches like Wodonga and Corryong planting multiple small missional congregations  in their regions that are part of the larger church but don’t necessarily meet with the larger church regularly. Innovation doesn’t have to be big but it can be significant – it can be small change that adds value or actually taking something away that no longer has value so that there is room to focus on other things.
  • The younger demographic lens  – like Emerge – a two pronged program consisting firstly of an apprenticeship pathway which is a 12 month cohort of emerging leaders. The second part of the program is called Next Steps, and is a leadership development opportunity for churches to encourage and develop their teams and volunteers. Both these programs aim to assist churches in identifying, developing and deploying emerging leaders.
  • The digital lens – this year, all of us have been thrown deeper into the digital world – some of our churches across our Union have been operating in this area for a while – others have been thrust into the digital world because of COVID.  We recognize that even though we may go back to gathering as congregations in 2021, we have also had a new digital space opened up where there is great potential –  and so on an ongoing basis, we need to look through a digital lens as well as a physical lens for church and mission .  Some churches will be running concurrent congregations – physical and online.  Some physical churches may close and some online churches may start.  and Some ministries will only operate digitally So, we need to make plans that will suit both physical and digital Ministry- like making a lot more of our training available online, recording video messages, having a resource hub on our website and much more to come

Another area we will be focusing on this year in our strategic plan is the Flourishing Church Framework.  In order to accomplish our vision of flourishing churches, we need to be able to measure whether we our churches are indeed flourishing or not.   The BUV Leadership Team developed a tool that will be used by church leadership teams to assess their ministry and to help the BUV Support Hub to identify areas we need to focus more resource on. This Flourishing Church Framework comes with 12 reflective questions and a rating scale for you to rate your church and ideally would be discussed as a church leadership.   Click here for more information >